My 2 favorite players are MPC-HC and Tiny Player. I also have VLC installed, but I only use it when both DirectShow based players fail.
In MPC-HC I have disabled the internal LAV filters and use the latest installed LAV Filters version.
You can download LAV Filters here:
https://files.1f0.de/lavf/LAVFilters-0.74.1.exe
This is the installer version containing both 32-bit and 64-bit filters. Before installing you should remove older versions and also remove the settings from this Registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\LAV
Then install the latest version, use all the default installer settings. The only thing I have changed in the settings is activating the tray icons for all 3 components.
Tiny Player is a very lightweight DirectShow based player, very solid and fast, but no longer maintained. Download here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/tinyplayer/
The readme says that the author prefers ffdshow, but I use LAV Filters without any problems.
Cheers
manolito